Report reveals £20m clause that could hamper Newcastle United's attempts to land Premier League striker

It hasn't been a good day for Newcastle United when it comes to potential deals for strikers after Brighton ruled out a loan exit for Evan Ferguson.

Another Premier League striker on Newcastle's radar is Ipswich Town's Liam Delap.

The former Manchester City academy man has taken like a duck to water in the Premier League with the newly promoted Tractor Boys this season and already has six goals to his name.

That form has captured the attention of several top clubs including Newcastle United and Arsenal.

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Liam Delap has caught the eye of several big clubs for his early Premier League form

21-year-old Delap only arrived at Ipswich in the summer and is already being earmarked for a quick move with Ipswich likely to demand up to £41 million for the striker for whom they paid £20 million to Manchester City in July.

While Arsenal, Newcastle, Aston Villa, Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund, RB Leipzig, Ajax and PSV are all credited with an interest in Delap, it's his former club, Manchester City, who have an ace up their sleeve.

As they so often do when selling their academy players, City inserted a buy-back clause into Delap's contract which means they would only have to pay £20 million to Ipswich to bring him back to the Etihad.

City could buy back Delap and sell him for a profit all over again

Perhaps even more insidious is that City could buy him back at £20 million just to sell him again at a higher price according to Caught Offside.

It's not outside of the laws of the game, so there's nothing wrong with it, and indeed if Newcastle did something like that we'd be applauding the ingenuity, but as it could directly affect Newcastle landing a promising young striker, we're calling it evil in this case.

In all seriousness, we're not sure how strong Newcastle's interest in Delap is in the first place, but the fact that Arsenal are sniffing around could be good news for the Magpies as it could throw them further away from Alexander Isak.